Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekaran yesterday (21) said the government would definitely defeat the no-confidence motion submitted against a member of its parliamentary group.<\/p>\n
The NPP National List MP said so at a press conference held at his ministry. Although, a press release issued by the ministry refrained from mentioning the no confidence motion, the JVPer was obviously referring to the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) action against the Deputy Defence Minister Maj. Gen. (retd.) Aruna Jayasekera over his alleged culpability in failing to thwart 2019 Easter Sunday attacks as he served a Security Forces Commander, East at the time.<\/p>\n
The ministry quoted Chandrasekaran as having said: \u201cOur 159-member parliamentary group is like a family in parliament. We wouldn\u2019t abandon ministers or MPs whom we consider as family. Those who had been fighting earlier are now united and are conspiring against the government. We are strongly moving forward. No one can cause our fall. In spite of claims that the NPPers are divided, we are working together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Top SJB spokesman Mujibur Rahuman appreciated that the Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources Minister has taken a clear stand on the issue.<\/p>\n
Views expressed by Minister Chandrasekeran meant that the government had discussed the SJB challenge and decided to allow the process to take place contrary to position taken up by some others.<\/p>\n
The Colombo District lawmaker said that however the declaration made by Minister Chandrasekaran seemed to be at odds with the government parliamentary group. Responding to The Island queries, the former UNPer who had been a member of the yahapalana government at the time of devastating terror attacks said that various interested parties put forth the view that no-confidence motion couldn\u2019t be moved against a deputy minister. \u201cWhy not.\u201d asked Rahuman while pointing out Maj. Gen. Jayasekera acted as the Defence Minister on six occasions when President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was out of the country.<\/p>\n
The SJBer said that the Catholic Church may have taken up the issue with President Dissanayake when the Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference, including Archbishop of Colombo Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith met the NPP leader at the Presidential Secretariat on Wednesday (20).<\/p>\n
MP Rahuman reiterated that an impartial investigation promised by President Dissanayake couldn\u2019t be conducted unless the government at least temporarily moved Maj. Gen. Jayasekera out of the Defence Ministry. The retired senior army officer shouldn\u2019t be granted special status on the basis of him being a member of the NPP ex-military grouping that backed the party at the presidential and parliamentary polls last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are waiting for official announcement from the Speaker\u2019s Office in this regard,\u201d the MP said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fisheries, Aquatic and Ocean Resources Minister Ramalingam Chandrasekaran yesterday (21) said the government would definitely defeat the no-confidence motion submitted against a member of its parliamentary group. The NPP National List MP said so at a press conference held at his ministry. Although, a press release issued by the ministry refrained from mentioning the no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,59],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local","8":"category-breaking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1354\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vanninet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}